Yangshuo is a town just outside of Guilin, China and is famous for its karst mountains and also for being on the 20 yuan note.
Again i never really kept a diary for Yangshuo, so will just let the photo’s do the talking and will resume the blogging in the next post (Hanoi).
This was the view from my hotel roof, which also had a bar and was an awesome place to meet folk and chill out. The girl working on the bar, Fen, was a good laugh and probably the coolest chinese person i had met through China.
On my second day in Yangshuo i rented a bike and cycled out in to the country side. I passed alot of caves which i never bothered stopping to go inside as they were jammed full of tour groups and were slightly expensive. I stopped here though to take a photo of the butterfly and then cycled off before i got hassled by the touts.
These are bamboo rafts which you can pay the driver to sail you back into Yangshuo. I never bothered as i wanted to cycle further and had heard about a huge loop you can do that takes you through the mountains and back into the other side of Yangshuo.
I was getting bored of cycling on the roads, so just picked a random dirt track of the road and headed down into a farm. There was noone about so i just chilled for a bit and then headed back onto the road.
I then ended up cycling for about an hour or two before i realised the mountains had stopped and i was heading into flat farmland. I guessed since Yangshuo is famous for the mountains that i had taken a wrong turn. So i turned round and headed back! I was so tired and thirsty and there were no shops or anywhere to buy some water, so i had to make do with eating a pomela, which is like a massive orange.
I finally made it back to Yangshuo and headed straight for the rooftop bar to grab a beer. Think i probably cycled about 60km / 37miles that day.
I had this for lunch one day. Its a chinese hamburger and they make it by rolling out some dough, putting it in a stone oven until it inflates, cut a hole in it and stuff it full of veg, meat and spices! was amazing.
Me and i girl i met ( cant remember her name now ) decided to head to the meat market as we heard it was pretty eye opening. We had trouble finding it so asked about and were lead through a huge door. As soon as i walked in the smell hit me like a punch and the floor was just covered in blood and guts. At first it was just all the usual meats like pig, chicken and fish but tucked away up the back were cats and dogs. The cats in the photo are mostly dead but a few were still barely alive and could hardly move. We think they had just died due to neglect and just been left in the cage with no food. Horrible.
A duck skinned and cut open. All animals are alive here and butchered when you order one.
This was one of the dog counters. Just before i got here i heard a dog yelp and immediately walked over to see the guy holding the dog by the throat and chopping with a huge knife along the two sides of its face, he then grabbed the skin and just rolled it right of the body. We decided to just leave him to it and walk on. We went round the other stalls and were ready to leave but i wanted to head back and see again and sneak a photo. By the time we got back he had the dog on the ground and was ripping the intestines out. Blood was everywhere, deffo the most horrible thing ive seen.
One day i went canoeing and met an irish couple, Russel and Keely! We were took out to a town where the canoes were waiting on us, we all got in and were told to just start paddling down the river. At first it seemed we were just being left to make out way but after about 40 mins an escort showed up, made sure we were alright and then zoomed on ahead to wait for us to catch up. Was cool just being left to go at our own speed and not be rushed all the way.
After about an hour and a half, we were told to head onto the shore where we were met by a woman. We thought that was the end and were glad to have got the end and then we were told it was only half way and still had another hour and a half to go.
We ended up canoeing 14km’s and were knackered by the end. The river was flat calm and had no current to help you along so had no chance to just sit back and float along.
I haven’t really been keeping much of a diary up until now so cant remember what i done or when i done it exactly, so will just let the photos do most of the talking on this post and the next ( Yangshuo ) and will start blogging properly in Hanoi.
Shanghai is a crazy city with wild nightlife and even wilder things going on through the day.
The first few days i had in Shanghai were cool, i just walked round the city, took loads of photos and checked out some sights like the bund, peoples square and the old town.
Then on my 2nd or 3rd night in Shanghai me and few others from the hostel decide to head out to some clubs. On the way there we jumped in a taxi and head for the club, and i pull my share of the fare out of my wallet but i think when i have went to put the wallet in my pocket again i missed and just sat it on the seat. Not quite sure as i had drunk a good bit before heading out! So i get out the taxi without taking the receipt and walk away. Just as i realise i had lost my wallet i turn round and see the taxi driving off. FUCK! The guy i was with then tells me if i had grabbed the reciept then we could have just called him and got him to turn around.
So that was me stuck in Shanghai till my new bankcard got to me which would take up to a week and a bit.
My dad managed to send me some cash through western union to keep me going and from then i just had to lay low and try not spend too much.
So the following week i just stayed in the hostel, done some design work and more or less lived like a local which was cool. Eating in all the local food places and drinking cheap beer. Was a cool experience and good to get away from all the tourist crap for a bit.
When my bankcard finally came, i went and got some cash and done all the tourist things i had still to do.
We then all had one last night out for halloween and the club we went to was mental! 100 yuan entry and free drink all night.. They were giving away ipads and had smurf dancers, chinese rappers and all sorts. Crazy.
Got to Xian after 12 hours on a hard-seat overnight train! Was torture and is definitely the worst journey i’ve had to take so far on my trip. That and the fact i was surrounded by 9 other chinese folk all trying to talk to me, laughing at me and trying to feed me chicken feet, tofu and other stuff.
I cant really remember what happened in the specific order and on what days, so ill just list the cool parts of Xian and what we got up to instead of trying to write like a diary.
The Muslim Quarter is a massive market right next to the Drum Tower in Xian. It sells everything and it’s amazing fun to go in and haggle with the old ladies who always have amazing banter! A guy i was with, Joe, was haggling for something and just typed in on the calulator something stupidly low so he could work the price up again.. the woman then told him he was cute and typed in 1,000,000,000! Was pretty funny as we did not expect it!
When i arrived in Xian i had a really blocked nose and decided to head to muslim quarter for some Tiger Balm. I found a stall selling it and the woman wanted 300 yuan for 1 tub (about £30) which is rediculous! I managed to haggle her down to 100 yuan for 2 tubs (about £10) which is still a bit of a rip off since thats what it costs back home!
The muslim quater also has amazing cheap food stalls. One day after cycling round the city walls Me, Kat, Joe & Trisha headed for a shop in that we had seen a few days before and got some noodles! Was probably one of the best bowls of noodles ive had and it was only 18 yuan which is like £1.80. So good.
The Bell & Drum Towers are 2 pretty big temples about 200 metres away from each other. As you may be able to tell from the names one tower is full of bells and the other full of drums. They also have music performances through the day. I managed to catch the drum perfomance which was pretty cool!
Other than the music and the views from the top the towers are pretty boring, better to just look at them from street level.
The Terracotta is a huge army of statues that have been found buried in a town just outside Xian. Each soldier’s face has been hand scuplted and apparently no 2 are the same.
There are 3 halls you can visit and we were told it was best to do them from 3rd to 1st and the 1st hall is the biggest and will make the other halls look less impressive.
The 3rd hall never had that many soldiers in but had a few horses and tools to look at. The 2nd hall had nothing as it was all still buried and under excavation, so couldnt really see much. The 1st hall was the by far the most interesting. Its about the size of an huge aircraft hanger and had loads more soldiers, horses & tools than the other halls had combined.
Overall it was cool to see the statues but it wasn’t one of the best things ive seen in China so far. Just felt like i saw them, got to tick it off the list and then left.
The Big Goose Pagoda is a large pagoda / tower on the outskirts of Xian. It has a large park surrounding it with a huge fountain show. Inside the walls of the pagoda you can go see monks chanting and people praying.
The museum in Xian is had 3 rooms, one for each era of Chinese history. Each room has loads of cool stuff including tools, skulls, statues and much more. They also had a video explaining how the silk route came to be.
Surrounding Xian are huge city walls that run right round the perimeter of the city. We hired some bikes and went for a cycle round the top. The total distance is around 13Km.
At the end of the cycle we managed to catch the last of a show that was going on involving drummers and soldiers.
Mount Hushan is a huge mountain which is about 3 hours away from Xian by bus.
When you get to the mountain you have 2 options, Get the cablecar or walk from the bottom.. We chose to get the cable car as we only really wanted to climb the East and South peaks and also do the plank walk.
On certain parts of the route the chain fences are covered in padlocks. I think if you want you can buy a padlock, get your name inscribed on it and then lock it to the chain and keep the key. We never done it though.
The Plank Walk was definitely the scariest thing ive ever done! We walked up, paid 30 yuan for the harness, the guy put it on me clipped me to the cables and told me to go! No safety talk, nothing. First thing you get to is a large ladder made of metal rods pinned inside a crack in a cliff! Some of them were loose and wobbled a good bit when you passed them! I got about 6 or 8 rods down and noticed there was about 4 people coming up the ladder so had to climb onto a rock at the side to let them passed. was so sketchy!
We eventually got to the bottom of the ladder and had to make it to the planks by using small foot holes cut into the cliff! Once on the planks i was scared to move as they were wobbling and creeking but managed to make it out to the middle for a photo! I turned back to let the guy i was with out and to take some photos of him.. We were then gonna continue to the end but it started getting very windy and then out of nowhere it started snowing.. So we had to climb the ladder in the snow which was not good. Feet sliding all over the place.
Once we got to the top it was so cold, we ran into a bhuddist temple and sat out the snow for a bit and tried to warm up. Was insane how quickly it went from a hot summers day to snowing, happened within 10 – 20 mins.
After we warmed up we started heading back down the mountain and after dropping off the south peak the weather went back to normal..
This who i spent most of my time with in Xian.. Sick Guys.
The night before i went to the wall, i ended up drinking till 4am with the boys from Cumbernauld. I then had to get back up at 6am to go get the tour bus and head to the wall. Was rough.
Our first stop was a place called the ‘Sacred Way’ which was cool and had amazing statues but our tour guide spent way too much time talking about it all and everyone just wanted to get to the wall.. So after about 40 mins of walking round we got back on the bus.
We were then took to a jade factory, where they spent 5 minutes showing us how to tell the difference between real & fake jade which i cant even remember and then they left us in the shop for 30 mins hoping we would buy something. No one did.
Back on the bus and we headed for the Great Wall.
Just before getting the cable car we stopped for lunch which was amazing, took us to a restaurant at the foot of the wall and had laid out loads of chinese food on a rotating table and we could all just help ourselves!
We then went up on the cable car which ran right across the top of the toboggan run, was cool seeing everyone firing down the hill on the sleds. I really wanted a shot on the toboggan but when i got to the top the queue was like 200 folk deep and we didn’t have time. Was gutted.
On the wall there were two ways you could go. Left, which was the easy way but a longer walk or right, which was the more challenging route but short. So me and a french guy that was also on the tour took the challenging route.
We made it all the way to the end of the wall and then walked past the sign where it tells you stop and ended up walking some of the old ruins aswell, was cool to see.
Some of the sections of stairs on the way up were near vertical and i seen a few folk coming down the stairs backwards on their hands and knee’s was pretty funny.
After the wall they took us to a Silk Factory which was just pointless as we were all just wanting to go back to our hostels.
The wall was amazing but our tour guide rushing everyone and taking to all the other places spoiled it, if i ever go back ill deffo just get the bus there myself next time.
I arrived at my Hostel in Beijing around 3pm and checked in.. I head to my room, walk in and there are 2 guys still in bed! I say hello and get a “Awright Big Man” back. I say “Glasgow?” and one of them says “aye”.. “Where you’s from?”… “Whats it called? Cumbernauld!” is the answer i get! Was well suprised to have came all the way to China and im in a room with two guys from Scotland.
They had just arrived at about midnight and were still gubbed with jetlag so i left them to sleep it off and went and done some washing and grabbed some beers and took it easy for the rest of the night.
The next morning i went out for a walk and headed to Jingshan Park for an amazing view over the forbidden city!
I then took a walk right round the whole park which was cool, loads of old monuments and wierd characters kicking about.
After the park i just headed back to the hostel, met the Scott and Moff from Cumbarnauld and went with them to KFC. Afterwards we headed down to the Wangfujing Food Market to see some crazy food. As soon as we got there the first thing i saw was live scorpions on a stick which they then fried and rolled in spices if you bought some. So i got talked into buying some buy the guy on the stall and asked Scott and Moff if they wanted some too, they both shit themselves and said no, but after i got mine, ate one and told them they werent that bad, Scott eventually got one down him! They were pretty tasty, just tasted kinda like spicy chicken with jaggy bits.
The next night i went back to the food market to try some other stuff and take some more photos, i also went to another food market about 5 minutes away where they were selling similar stuff.
I ended up trying a squid / sleevefish on a stick which was was pretty good!
The next day i took a walk out to another park just beyond the forbidden city on the west side of Beijing called Belhai Park. It was much bigger than the last park and had a massive lake where you could hire pedalo’s and take a trip on bigger boats.
Again afterwards i went and met the Scott and Moff and headed down to Wangfujing which is like the Buchanan Street of Beijing! There we got hassled by scammers and watched about 70 folk dance outside a church, we were told that they do it to burn of their dinner and meet new friends, Was crazy!
The next day i headed for the Forbidden City, i left it kinda late which meant i missed the Clock Exhibition and the chance to see Mao’s body in the Mausoleum but it meant i missed all queues! which was great, just walked right in, no bother! Heard stories about people turning up at 8am and not getting in till 11 or 12. Couldnt be bothered with that.
I walked around the forbidden city but never had a tour guide so never knew what each part was, or what made each building different so it was a little boring. Later when i was chatting to a girl i met in Mongolia called Mada (spelling?), she told me that you could get an audio guide that only spoke when you got near an object, which would have been cool, since i thought it was just a running tape that you had to follow.
Will definitely get the audio tour for the Terracotta Warriors in Xian.
On the way home it got dark really quickly, so i stopped outside the forbidden city for a few more photos before heading back to the hostel.
Later that night Me, Scott and Moff went and bought 2 bottles of what we thought was vodka for 40 yen each (£4) but it turns out it was chinese rice wine. We played a card game called scabby queen where you have to get rid of all your doubles until one person is left with a queen.. The person with the queen had to drink 3 shots of rice wine. The wine was probably the worst thing ive ever tasted! Minging.
After drinking for a good few hours we headed down the the 24 hour mcdonalds for some food and on the way met this chinese break dancer guy and Scott & Moff challenged him to a dance off! was hilarious.
After food we headed back to the hostel, it was 4am and i was getting picked up at 6:30am to goto the Great Wall of China.
1. Babies dont wear nappies, they just have a hole in their trousers and shit in the street.
2. You cant flush toilet paper down the toilet, you have to put it in a bin next to the toilet.
3. People all meet up in the street and dance to burn off their dinner. They do the same 16 step dance over and over.
4. Suncream has skin whitener in it, as if you are seen with a tan it means you are poor as only farmers have tans.
5. You can buy chicken feet in the supermarket. I tried a bit of one on the train to Xian and it didnt really taste of much, still minging though when you look at it.
